


Keep the Plates Spinning

by Path



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures, Problem Sleuth (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-09-16
Updated: 2011-09-21
Packaged: 2017-10-23 19:17:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/253934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Path/pseuds/Path
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Problem Sleuth, and you have a few things on your plate these days. It's not enough trying to balance your job with your home life. You have to have a definition-defying relationship with the city's most dangerous gangster.</p><p>As if that wasn't enough, you think you're falling in love with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sannam](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Sannam).



> My half of a trade with Sannam, with her part here (http://sannam.tumblr.com/post/10245144494/kanaya-the-mother-daughter-sleuth-never-had).

Your back impacts with the door, knocking the wind out of you. For a moment, you're helpless. Your aggressor knows it, too, taking the chance to disarm you. For awhile, you'd had him going, keys under his jaw and ready to blow his brains through his hat, but now the tables are turned, and you're the one on the receiving end.

This time, thankfully, it's fingers he rakes down your body, and not blades, and you'd arch into it if you could find the breath to do so. Feels good, though, real damn good. Not as good as a second later, though, when he gets your fly down and those skinny fingers of his into your pants.

You think you might have accidentally blown your own brains into the ceiling, instead, because you've never felt like this before. Well, okay, not since last time you were aggressed on your own doorstep by this guy specifically.

It's only been a handful of times that it's happened, and you don't know what "it" should really be called. But even if you don't have a word for it, you've definitely never had sex this good. He's shoving your pants down roughly, now, fingers and mouth seizing back onto you, and you tip your head back into the door with an appreciative thud.

It's been a long damn time, so this is seriously needed. All the same, you've never found a good time for this, though now seems to be particularly unfortunate, but it's so rewarding and fantastic and, well, mind-blowing, that you're willing to overlook that. Mostly. A glance at your clock on your bedside table (you are in the bedroom, for all you can never make it to the bed) reminds you it's 2:30, and your fingers tighten reflexively in his hair.

"Ten minutes," you say, voice twisted.

Your name is Problem Sleuth, and you are running on a bit of a time frame here.

All the same, you are not stopping now. You get your hand buried in his hair by the roots and drag him off of you, throw him to the bed and pin him face down. By the time you wrangle him into a semblance of submission and get inside him, it's 2:38 and your heart races in a bit of a different manner to what it's been doing since he showed up. After that you forget to check the time, because you get buried into him and your breath falls out of your chest. He's still fighting, but in a show of good will you reach around him past hip bones like kukris and wrap your own fingers around him.

You move together, but it's nothing like synchronized. This is somehow more real than anything, desperate sweaty rutting into him as he snarls and begs by turns. You run your free hand down his back between his knife-blade shoulders and even there the softer skin is punctuated by scars- slim ones from a knife or razor, pale and almost invisible, and wide welts with thick scar tissue, something you've never seen before him and don't ask about. He twists in protest even as your fingers dwell on it.

"Fuck, faster," he growl-gasps at you, and for once you don't match his usual spite and slow down just to piss him off, because this feels too good and you want more, you want him, you want him and his rough voice spiralling out of his control. You want him ruined and opened up, in your dark room where you didn't bother to flip the switch, the two of you were so busy furiously wrestling each other and mashing your mouths against whatever part got closest.

You pound into him, and his hips slam reactively into your hand, and you can feel how hard he is, obviously as hard as you, because whatever this brutal violent fight-loving the two of you do gets to him just as easily as it does to you. You're taller than him, by just enough, so you sink your teeth into the muscles wiring his shoulder, and you keep them there as you come, chanting a litany of garbled curses and blessings into him. It's muted, with your teeth in his shoulder, but he can hear it, and that's enough. Your eyes roll up in pleasure, all these bruises and bloody cuts yielding a feeling like white-hot energy boiling the blood out of your body in a single burning ecstatic second.

You go limp, and he wraps his own fingers around your suddenly loose ones and pumps himself, letting out a short series of "Oh, fuck-"s and throwing his head back. It cracks into yours audibly, and the two of you hiss briefly, his cry devolving half-way into a low groan. His slim swimmer's body tightens, tenses under you, and finally collapses, wracked with gasps.

 _God,_ you think, _he is gorgeous like that_. Before you can deal with that idea, though, you have another thought, one of, _What time is it?_

You summon all your resources and lift your head, unlocking your teeth from his shoulder. 2:52, says the clock, and, "Shit," you say. Your voice is still mangled by pleasure and exhaustion, but you start moving all the same, untangling and extracting yourself. You begin sorting clothes, grabbing yours and tossing his, running a hand through your hair to see how out-of-place it looks. You keep it cropped short, so you have nothing like the problems he must have with his uncontrollable spiky hurricane of a head. You just clap a hat on top and call it a day.

"Wham bam thank you, out you go, huh?" comes his voice, low and rough like sandpaper running through your chest. Your knees almost give out from the sound. When you turn, he's rolled over, watching you with an expression like a tired cat, all smug and dizzy.

"Today, yeah," you manage. You have to focus for a second to remember how to do up your pants. "Don't you have a bank to rob or something?"

"Like I'd tell you if I did. No, you're right, I might anyhow. It's not like you could stop us."

Shirt, why so many buttons? You vow to find something easier next time. "You mind moving your body with your mouth there? We've gotta get moving."

His smile becomes, if anything, more smug. "Didn't you say that ten minutes ago? I can do that again, if you're asking."

Your brain falls through your throat and chest, taking your heart with it. What he did ten minutes ago is still in the forefront of your mind and you're not going to forget it anytime soon. And yeah, you do want him to do that again. Just not now, is all.

Okay, yes, now. You want nothing more than to curl around him and sleep, breathing in the smell of his skin and hair, arm thrown around him. You could waste hours on this- or rather, spend them, because this is by no means a waste. You do want more of him, and you want it now. It's just that now is a really bad time.

You throw his pants at his face, rather than reply.

The next few minutes is just frantic readjusting, remembering how to walk, to tuck your shirt in, running to the bathroom to splash some water on your face and quickly clean out that bite mark he left on your collarbone. He gets dressed, grudgingly, and slaps his hat on his wild hair without trying to control it. It's 3:01 when you walk out of the bedroom, and to your astonishment, the house is empty.

"Yeah, what a rush," he says from behind you, sauntering into the kitchen. "Every minute counts, huh?"

The door opens. Two intent green eyes latch onto him first, then you, then him again.

"Hello Father," says your girl, standing warily in the front door.

"Kanaya," you say, affecting ease, "you're late."

"Yes," she says, in her usual precise way. She doesn't take her eyes off him. "I stopped to tie my shoe on the walk home. It took a minute off my time."

"Oh," you say, your insides falling over themselves in relief. "Uh. Kanaya, this is one of my business associates." You gesture to him. He watches her.

"Hello... Sir," Kanaya says, not losing a smidge of suspicion. "Pardon my rudeness, but I really must get to my homework." She slips her shoes off, picks up her bag, and walks to her room, the entire time clearly avoiding him.

"Good girl," you say as she passes, and you escort him to the front door. That was good of her. You've taught her well. Someone she doesn't know, she's best off in her room while you deal with them.

"Nice kid," he says.

"Yeah," you say, really not wanting to talk about it.

He slips his jacket on. It's black, like all of his clothes, and embroidered on the lapel with a white spade. You're glad he wasn't wearing it a minute ago. In a way, it's the final symbol, the moment where he's not yours anymore, but belongs to them again. His attitude changes, minutely, but it does. He's someone else now.

"When d'you want to, you know..."

"I'll find you when I want you," says Spades Slick, lips curving in a smirk, and he walks out without another look.

Your name is Problem Sleuth, Midnight City's top problem sleuth, and you've got a couple things on your plate these days.


	2. Chapter 2

"Okay," you say, ducking your head into your daughter's room and splitting the second as finely as possible. "YoucancomeoutnowI'mtakingashower,dinnerlater-" you rush out, and flee to the bathroom. Of all the people who have shot you accusatory looks in the city, Kanaya is second only to your ex-girlfriend in strength, and you know she hasn't come into her full power yet. SLEUTH ROLL can't escape everything; you've had to develop other techniques to deal with things like shame and guilt.

The shower is blissful, the best thing you can think of having after sex (aside from more sex). The scrapes across you burn and then ache and then just fade into heat. It's one of the few things you can think of that's better than collapsing next to Slick and actually just sleeping there where you fall.

You let yourself dwell on that for a bit. You haven't really thought about it before, but you suddenly miss it without ever having done it. You could throw an arm over Slick and pull him in close and bury your face in his hair and silently laugh at his unwillingness and his sleepy protests.

Then you're standing in a cold shower with the soap in hand, and you're not sure how long you've been there but it's freezing. Your apartment is not known for its amenities. Skin crawling, you make the rest of the shower as quick as possible.

Kanaya is waiting for you when you emerge from your room, dressed in fresh clothes and feeling sort of weird. (It's probably just the cold.) She's bent over her homework, a stool pulled up at the kitchen island that's also your table. A pot of dry spaghetti is on the stove and a jar of sauce sits beside it. Her eyes snap up to you as soon as you enter, and slowly, her head follows, affecting a slight tilt. Is it exasperation or curiosity? You can't read her well enough.

"Evening," you say, and head for the stove. If you keep yourself busy, any interrogation to follow will go over a little easier.

"He is not going to be a part of the team, is he?" asks Kanaya.

"What?" you ask distractedly as you fill the pot with water.

"Your business associate. You are not making him a part of Team Sleuth, are you?"

"Nope," you answer definitively. "That's definitely not going to be a thing."

"Good," she says. "He looks disreputable."

You have to focus rather hard on the spaghetti to stop yourself from laughing.

Dinner comes along. It's not as good as when Kanaya makes it but it's a lot more interesting; you make up for your inability to follow simple instructions with a couple shakes of what you think is cayenne. Your daughter hasn't gotten around to making labels for all the spices yet so occasionally, you've got to guess.

"How's the homework coming, kiddo?" you ask over dinner. Kanaya's a smart kid, and you privately suspect she already knows everything scholarly you've ever picked up and more. Your talents lie outside the realm of literature and mathematics. Especially outside mathematics. So it's rare she needs your help with any of it, these days. Kanaya might not be the smartest kid in her class, but she's at the top of it all the same.

To your surprise, she lets out a short, theatrical sigh before answering merely, "Coming."

"What, what's the problem?" you ask.

"Nothing," she replies, in one of the first lies your daughter has ever told you. "The homework is just slow."

"Try that again," you tell her.

She lets out a rather unladylike growl of exasperation. "I don't want to talk about it." She heads off your next question with, "Excuse me," and heading straight for her room, sweeping her books off the counter as she goes.

Well, that was a first. You barely have time to register that something is Going On with her, though, because the phone rings and Pickle Inspector tells you he's a block away and he needs your help with something, and you have to grab your coat and run, leaving a pair of plates of half-eaten spaghetti on the table.

"Back later, kiddo," you yell, grabbing your hat on your way out. "Lock the door."

More things on this plate all the time.


End file.
